Hitching Rides with Buddha
This book came out in I think 1998, but I only just found out about it, and it is an absolute plum. If you love Bill Bryson, you'll love Will Ferguson just as much. His brilliantly creative writing about hitchhiking the length of Japan is alternately hysterically funny and stabbingly poignant. It's taken me longer than any other book recently to get through because I treasured every page so much.